#BlogTour #TheCoffeePotBookClub @cathiedunn / #QandAs : Murder on Oak Street – I. M. Foster @IMFosterMystery #HistoricalMystery #CozyMystery

– The Magic of Wor(l)ds is a hobby, reviews and other bookish stuff on this site are done for free.
I’m grateful of receiving a free copy from the publisher/author in exchange for an honest review of this book. –

Today I’m delighted to be on the ‘Murder on Oak Street’ blogtour, organised by The Coffee Pot Book Club.
To promote this book I’ll be sharing an interview between the author and me, but first I have some information

About the Author :

I. M. Foster is the pen name author Inez Foster uses to write her South Shore Mystery series, set on Edwardian Long Island. Inez also writes historical romances under the pseudonym Andrea Matthews, and has so far published two series in that genre: the Thunder on the Moor series, a time-travel romance set on the 16th century Anglo-Scottish Borders, and the Cross of Ciaran series, which follows the adventures of a fifth century Celt who finds himself in love with a twentieth century archaeologist.
Inez is a historian and librarian, who love to read and write and search around for her roots, genealogically speaking. She has a BA in History and an MLS in Library Science and enjoys the research almost as much as she does writing the story. In fact, many of her ideas come to her while doing casual research or digging into her family history. Inez is a member of the Long Island Romance Writers, the Historical Novel Society, and Sisters in Crime.

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About the Book :

New York, 1904. After two years as a coroner’s physician for the city of New York, Daniel O’Halleran is more frustrated than ever. What’s the point when the authorities consistently brush aside his findings for the sake of expediency? So when his fiancée leaves him standing at the altar on their wedding day, he takes it as a sign that it’s time to move on and eagerly accepts an offer to assist the local coroner in the small Long Island village of Patchogue.
Though the coroner advises him that life on Long Island is far more subdued than that of the city, Daniel hasn’t been there a month when the pretty librarian, Kathleen Brissedon, asks him to look into a two-year-old murder case that took place in the city. Oddly enough, the case she’s referring to was the first one he ever worked on, and the verdict never sat right with him.
Eager for the chance to investigate it anew, Daniel agrees to look into it in his spare time, but when a fresh murder occurs in his own backyard, he can’t shake his gut feeling that the two cases are connected. Can he discover the link before another life is taken, or will murder shake the peaceful South Shore village once again?

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This title is available to read with #KindleUnlimited.

Universal Link

And now it’s finally time for the

Hi

First of all thank you very much for taking the time to answer my questions, I really appreciate it. Here we go! 🙂

Can you, for those who don’t know you already, tell something about yourself and how you became an author?
I’ve been writing for as long as I can remember, but becoming an author was a bit more gradual. For years, I wrote stories whenever I had a spare moment, and even tried the traditional publishing route, but I had a job and a family to raise, so needless to say, the books were put on the back burner. Then a few years ago, I decided to get serious and published my first book, a historical romance under the pen name of Andrea Matthews. That was it. I was a published author, and for me, there was no turning back. I love the whole process. OK, maybe not the editing so much. But after writing two romance series, under the pen name Andrea Matthews, I decided to dig out the historical mystery that I’d been working on. After a few edits and revisions, I felt it was where I wanted it to be and published it under the pen name, I. M. Foster. Why two pen names? As a librarian, I noticed that patrons sometimes became annoyed when they picked up their favorite mystery author, only to find out the author’s latest book was a romance or vis a versa. And so, I decided to avoid that pitfall and write under the two pen names. It’s a little more work, but I think it’s worth it.

Which books did/do you love to read as a child/now as a grown-up?
Whatever I read must have two aspects: history and romance. That being the case, I love historical romance as well as historical mysteries that have a bit of romantic tension in them. The first book I fell in love with was Pride and Prejudice. Who doesn’t love Mr. Darcy? Today I read authors like Victoria Thompson, Andrea Penrose, and C. S. Harris to name a few. At the moment, however, I’m reading a book by a friend, author Griffin Brady, entitled the Hussar’s Duty. It’s packed full of history, with a lovely romantic story too. Right up my ally.

Is there a writer whose brain you would love to pick for advice? Who would that be and why?
There are so many wonderful writers, it would be hard to choose. Perhaps J.K. Rowling. I love how she worked so much detail and mythology into her Harry Potter series and captured the hearts of children and adults alike. I’m also interested in how she managed to switch gears to create a successful adult series writing as Robert Galbratih. For marketing and productivity, I’d love to chat with James Patterson and Adriana Trigiani. As for my own genres, I’d like to sit down with the great mystery writers like P. D. James, Agatha Christi, and Conan Doyle, as well as a few more current ones, like those I’ve listed above.

If you could, which fictional character (from your own book(s) or someone else’s) would you like to invite for tea and why?
From someone else’s it would definitely be Mr. Darcy. I don’t think any explanation is needed there. And from my own? That really is a hard one. Can I just give a party and invite them all? If I had to choose, probably Daniel O’Halleran and Kathleen Brissedon, since that’s the book I’ll be working on next. It would be interesting to have a real conversation with them and not just the one that takes place in my head.

Do you have some rituals or habits whilst writing?
Not really. I write whenever I can. Sometimes the tv or radio is on. Sometimes it’s not. I have breakfast in the morning and start writing. I do fall down a lot of rabbit holes in the process as I tend to go off on research tangents in-between, but I don’t have any real habits.

Where do you come up with your idea(s)? Do people in your life need to be worried? 😉
No one needs to worry. My characters are all combinations of qualities, personalities, and traits. They may be gathered from a variety of people I’ve come across or simply be characteristics I either like or dislike in a person. None, however, are anyone in particular. In fact, I go to great lengths to make sure they’re not. I also never create perfect characters. Everyone has their faults, even my heroes. I think it makes them more realistic.
As for ideas where my story ideas come from, that could be just about anywhere. I’m a daydreamer, so I’m usually conjuring up stories for any given situation. I’ve actually have dreamed some of them, and keep a pad and pencil by my bed for just such an occasion. I’ve also stumbled across an idea or two while doing genealogical or other research. Some have even occured to me while sitting in my backyard listening to the birds sing and being carried away to another time or place – in a daydream, not in reality. lol

Are you a plotter or do you go with the flow, as a pantser?
Both. Writing historical mysteries, and romances, just by their very nature, require that there be a certain amount of plotting involved. To begin with, the period needs to be thoroughly researched before you even start. With the mysteries, clues need to be planted, suspects decided upon, and motives established as well. All that goes up on my “murder board” and in my series binder. However, once that is all planned out, and I start writing, I let the characters lead the way. Sometimes, after falling down a research rabbit hole, I may even discover an extra little tidbit that would work great in the story, and I let the characters run with it.

Can you give novice writers some tips (do’s/don’ts)?
Be open to advice, but you don’t necessarily have to take it. There are as many opinions out there as there are books. Use the ones that work for you, the ones that come from sources you admire, and disgard the others.
As for critiques, read them with an open mind, but don’t let them determine how you feel about your writing. Even the great novelists have their detractors. Use them to learn from and improve your writing, but always remember, you’re never going to please everyone.

What are your future plans as an author?
The good Lord willing, I hope to continue writing. For the moment, I’ve finished up my Thunder on the Moor series, which I write as Andrea Matthews. I say at the momoent, because I don’t have another story worthy of the tale at the moment, but should one hit me, there might be other books. My Cross of Ciaran series, also by Andrea Matthews, still has stories to be told, so I hope to continue writing that. The next installment is scheduled to be released in a few weeks. And as I. M. Foster, I’ll be starting on the second book in the South Shore Mystery series next week, which will hopefully be out this fall.
As for other plans, I’ve got a few tales floating around in my head, but it’s just a matter of finding the time to put them down on paper and make some sense of the plots etc., but you can be sure, they’ll all include history and at least a bit of romance.

Last, but not least : Can you give my readers one teaser from your book, which is featured here on my blog, please?
Tagline: Can the doctor and his self-appointed librarian assistant discover the link betweetn the murders before another life is taken, or will murder shake the peaceful south shore village once again?
Teaser line from Book: Kathleen was closing the door behind them when a shot rang out and Daniel staggered, doubling over and clutching his side.

Isn’t that a great reason to pick up the book and read it?!
Thanks once again, I. M. Foster, for this lovely interview!
Thanks so much for interviewing me! I really enjoyed talking with you.

The Magic of Wor(l)ds

#BlogTour #RandomThingsTours @RandomTTours / #QandAs : Bastard Verdict – James McCrone @jamesmccrone4

– The Magic of Wor(l)ds is a hobby, reviews and other bookish stuff on this site are done for free.
I’m grateful of receiving a free copy from the publisher/author in exchange for an honest review of this book. –

Today I’m delighted to be on the ‘Bastard Verdict’ blogtour, organised by Random Things Tours.
To promote this book I’ll be sharing an interview between the author and me, but first I have some information

About the Author :

James McCrone is the author of the Faithless Elector series—Faithless Elector, Dark Network, and Emergency Powers—“taut” and “gripping” political thrillers about a stolen presidency. Bastard Verdict is his fourth novel. To get the details right for this thriller, he drew on his boyhood in Scotland, and scouted the locations for scenes in the book while attending Bloody Scotland in 2019 and again in ’22.
His short stories have appeared in Rock and a Hard Place; Retreats from Oblivion: The Journal of NoirCon, and in the short-story anthology Low Down Dirty Vote, vols.2 and 3.
He’s a member of Mystery Writers of America, Int’l Assoc. of Crime Writers, Philadelphia Dramatists’ Center and he’s the vice-president of the Delaware Valley Sisters in Crime chapter.  A Pacific Northwest native (mostly), he lives in South Philadelphia with his wife and three children. James has an MFA from the University of Washington, in Seattle.
Bastard Verdict has been calling out to be written for a number of years, and it’s finally ready. He’s also continuing work on the next book, a gritty thriller set in rural Oregon, called Witness Tree.

About the Book :

You don’t have to win, just don’t lose.
High stakes and low politics combine with deadly effect in the new thriller, Bastard Verdict, by James McCrone.
A second referendum on independence looms, and a Scottish official enlists elections specialist Imogen Trager, a by-the-numbers, if rarely by-the-book investigator, to look into irregularities in the 2014 Scottish Independence referendum. Imogen uncovers a trail of criminal self-dealing, cover-ups, and murder leading to the highest levels of power. None but a very few know the truth. And those few need it to stay hidden at any cost.
Imogen will risk what’s left of her standing, her career–and maybe her life–to get at the truth.

Amazon

And now it’s finally time for the

Hi

First of all thank you very much for taking the time to answer my questions, I really appreciate it. Here we go! 🙂

Can you, for those who don’t know you already, tell something about yourself and how you became an author?
Thank you very much! I’m excited to talk about the book.
I’ve always told stories. It’s how I make sense of the world. When I was younger, I’d see things happen—someone crying on the bus, an argument between two people, a toddler rapturously chasing a pigeon—and I’d wonder what came before, what led to the moment I saw? I’d wonder whether the part I witnessed was the beginning, the middle or the end of the story. I’d find myself inventing either what led up to what I saw, or contemplating what came next. As a young boy, I was shocked to find out that not everyone did that.
When I was 14, my English composition teacher (Ms. Baer!) in Iowa City suggested I enter a short story I’d written for her class in a competition that the Univeristy of Iowa held for young writers. It was accepted and published in an anthology. Seeing my name and the words I’d created in print was thrilling, and I was hooked. Interestingly, even then, my SciFi-inspiered work was political. (The story that was accepted was a cautionary tale about chlorofluorocarbons—CFC’s—which were a big deal back then).
But how did I become an author? I think I was a reader, a story-teller, and then I wanted more. I wanted my stories to be part of a broader conversation. When I was a sophomore at university, the uni’s daily newspaper ran a special fiction section one Friday that included one of my stories. I heard from a friend at lunch that day that she’d overheard two other students reading it aloud to one another and loving it. That kind of thing will never get old!

Which books did/do you love to read as a child/now as a grown-up?
As a very young child, I loved the books that my parents could do voices for—Wind in the Willows, The Book of Three/Black Cauldron, the Jungle Books. (As a side note, I remember noting the biography line for the author of The Black Cauldron: it read, simply, “Lloyd Alexander is a Philadelphian.” Now that I’m also a Philadelphian, I sometimes think about shortening my bio to just that :).
Particularly during the difficult teenage years (and, if I’m honest, before that), my father and I communicated mostly through books. Around the time I was 12 years old, he started bringing home SciFi books, like the anthology First Contact, The Science Fiction Hall of Fame, the Foundation trilogy, or Dune. He’s a better used-bookstore sleuth than I’ll ever be, and among the sun-bleached, yellow pages and torn paperback covers he’d bring back, he would press on me books like The Forever War, The Catcher in the Rye, Catch-22, A Confederacy of Dunces, Brave New World, and 1984.
Later, he’d lend (or I would “appropriate”) books from his collection—Le Carre, Greene, Len Deighton, William McIlvanney. Interestingly, as a crime writer, I devoured McIlvanney’s Docherty long before I got to Laidlaw.

Is there a writer whose brain you would love to pick for advice? Who would that be and why?
Only one? I’d have loved to meet and speak with William McIlvanney. His gift for writing and incorporating important themes felt both easy and hard won. He weaves poetry and philosophy into his work, and he seems to know when and where it will be most effective at advancing the story or creating tension. As a young man, I’d read Neil Gunn’s Highland River and Lewis Grassic Gibbon’s Scots Quair trilogy, and I wanted to write a Scottish novel. Having spent time in Scotland as boy, I still heard the cadence and idioms of my schoolmates, their parents and our neighbors in my head. My brother and I often drop back into it without even noticing. (We call the summer we came back to the States, “the summer of what?” To our Scottish friends we sounded completely American, but back on the plains of Iowa, we found ourselves largely unintelligible.) I wanted to tell a story that brought that together, and Imogen, my protagonist, is both in and outisde that world. When I read Docherty, that desire became much, much stronger.
If you’ll allow me one more, I’d love to speak with Marian Evans (George Eliot). Her Middlemarch is one of my favorites. Her voice, her narrative control, wit, irony.

If you could, which fictional character (from your own book(s) or someone else’s) would you like to invite for tea and why?
George Orwell and Oscar Wilde – Together!
I think their dismay over politics writ large and small came from different places, but I think they shared an outsider’s view, and they might find they didn’t disagree. They are alike in their dismissals of bad writing and love of good writing. On the face of it, you might think Orwell would regard Wilde as frivolous, but I don’t think so. I’d love to see how they got on. I also wonder if I’d get a word in, or whether I’d just sit there like someone at a tennis match watching the banter and ideas zing across the table.

Do you have some rituals or habits whilst writing?
I’m afraid I’m rather dull that way. I get up at 4:45am, make some tea or coffee, and I set to work. At about ten past eight I make notes for where to start and what to work on for the next day, and then I switch gears and head to my day job.

Where do you come up with your idea(s)? Do people in your life need to be worried? 😉
Ha ha! Yes, and no. Certainly I mine lived experience for details, and as I mentioned earlier, I register stories that jump out at me. But I try not to take other people’s lives. At least not in a way they might notice or recognize. 🙂
Inpsiration can come from anywhere: a newspaper article, a conversation, a moment in the street. I’m particularly drawn to ideas and stories where the official version (whether it’s political or self-justifying) feels thin, or open to other interpretations. I’m interested in people/characters who feel a need to set things aright, either because they feel guilty, or due to some innate, offended sense of justice. The character of Imogen certainly qualifies there.

Are you a plotter or do you go with the flow, as a pantser?
I’m a little of both, actually. I’ll have an idea for a story, and at first, I often don’t know whether it’s a short story or a novel. It will kick around in my head for some time, until I start to see characters—or at least the main character—clearly. Then I’ll sit down and write about 25-30 pages.
By the end of those 25+ pages, I’ll have a pretty good idea of the story, of who wants what, and why they can’t get it. And I’ll start to see the obstacles, the antagonist, and I’ll see an ending. Which is the moment that I begin plotting the story out. Often, those first pages never make it into the finished book, but they’re necessary because it isn’t until I make a start that the characters and story come into sharp focus. Typically, I’ll make a rough outline and begin again.
But something happens as I get to about the halfway point of the first, rough draft. The arc of the story I outlined at the beginning, and the arc of the story I’m writing often don’t match up. At that moment, I look at the draft and decide whether the course I’m following is some self-indulgent tangent, or whether this is really where the story wants to go. I feel that you must listen both to your characters, and what they want, and to what the story wants.

Can you give novice writers some tips (do’s/don’ts)?
Don’t rewrite within the first draft. It does not have to be perfect. Too many novels are abandoned because the writer tinkers with what’s already there rather than finishing. Obviously, if you’re making huge changes in your outline (see above), it might be a good idea to make some notes in the earlier pages about changes you’ll need to make for the second draft. But write the first draft. It doesn’t even have to be very good. But it’s nothing until it’s finished.
Be ready to “kill your darlings.” Often, there’s a passage or a description that really pleases you. But in the second or third draft, if it isn’t helping the story forward, if it doesn’t reveal something important about character, cut it. If it makes you feel better, create a “cut file” where you dump the things you think you might want later. (In my experience, you never use it, but it’s nice not to feel like you’ve totally killed something beautiful 🙂
Do create a schedule for yourself. Despite what I said about letting a story kick around in my head for a while, I’m always writing something. I’m not waiting for inspiration, but rather waiting to see which story will push its way to the fore. I work a full time job, and I tried to have a writing schedule after work, but I found that I wasn’t getting good writing done, so I joined the #5amwritersclub. It’s not really a club. Its only membership requirement is that you get up and write. I get up most mornings at 4:45 am, and I’m in the chair by 5am. I can get 3 hours in before I have to switch gears and get to work. It took some real adjusting on my part. I’m not a morning person—certainly not so early! But I’ve found it worthwhile, and it keeps me writing. I get cranky and distracted when I’m not producing.

What are your futureplans as an author?
I’m writing my next book, and I have notes (and those 25+ pages) for two others beyond that, plus some short stories I want to work on. This next book will be the first without Imogen Trager in it, but it’s still animated by a sense of aggrieved justice. In the work-in-progress, called Witness Tree, a young man, fresh out of prison sees a murder, but given his past, no one will take him seriously. As he works to find out who committed the murder, and why, he’s confronted with systemic corruption that feels like what he hoped he’d left behind inside prison. It’s set in rural Oregon in amongst the vineyards there. I’m calling it a (pinot) Noir! As well as this character’s journey, I’m interested in the dichotomy between great wealth and poverty.

Last, but not least : Can you give my readers one teaser from your book, which is featured here on my blog, please?

Isn’t that a great reason to pick up the book and read it?!
Thanks once again, James McCrone, for this lovely interview!

The Magic of Wor(l)ds

#BlogTour #TheCoffeePotBookClub @cathiedunn / #QandAs : The Last Great Saxon Earls – Mercedes Rochelle @authorRochelle #AngloSaxon #HistoricalFiction

– The Magic of Wor(l)ds is a hobby, reviews and other bookish stuff on this site are done for free.
I’m grateful of receiving a free copy from the publisher/author in exchange for an honest review of this book. –

Today I’m delighted to be on the ‘The Last Great Saxon Earls’ blogtour, organised by The Coffee Pot Book Club.
To promote this book I’ll be sharing an interview between the author and me, but first I have some information

About the Author :

Mercedes Rochelle is an ardent lover of medieval history, and has channeled this interest into fiction writing. She believes that good Historical Fiction, or Faction as it’s coming to be known, is an excellent way to introduce the subject to curious readers. She also writes a blog: HistoricalBritainBlog.com to explore the history behind the story.
Born in St. Louis, MO, she received by BA in Literature at the Univ. of Missouri St.Louis in 1979 then moved to New York in 1982 while in her mid-20s to “see the world”. The search hasn’t ended!
Today she lives in Sergeantsville, NJ with her husband in a log home they had built themselves.

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About the Series :

Harold Godwineson, the Last Anglo-Saxon King, owed everything to his father. Who was this Godwine, first Earl of Wessex and known as the Kingmaker? Was he an unscrupulous schemer, using King and Witan to gain power? Or was he the greatest of all Saxon Earls, protector of the English against the hated Normans? The answer depends on who you ask. He was befriended by the Danes, raised up by Canute the Great, given an Earldom and a wife from the highest Danish ranks. He sired nine children, among them four Earls, a Queen and a future King. Along with his power came a struggle to keep his enemies at bay, and Godwine’s best efforts were brought down by the misdeeds of his eldest son Swegn. Although he became father-in-law to a reluctant Edward the Confessor, his fortunes dwindled as the Normans gained prominence at court. Driven into exile, Godwine regathered his forces and came back even stronger, only to discover that his second son Harold was destined to surpass him in renown and glory.

They showed so much promise. What happened to the Godwines? How did they lose their grip?
Earl Godwine had great plans for his children. But he didn’t understand his sons. And they barely understood each other.
This is England in the days of Edward the Confessor, when Godwine and his sons tower over the other great families. Harold emerges as the power behind the throne. Tostig rules the north. They control all the earldoms except one.
What could go wrong?
We see tumultuous events of the mid-11th c. through the eyes of Godwine’s sons. Harold’s story is all about Harold, but his brothers see things differently. Their remarks are tinged sometimes with admiration, sometimes with skepticism. Alas, Harold’s rise in fortune is not blameless and sometimes those closest to him must pay the price of his fame.

In 1066, the rivalry between two brothers brought England to its knees. When Duke William of Normandy landed at Pevensey on September 28, 1066, no one was there to resist him. King Harold Godwineson was in the north, fighting his brother Tostig and Harald Hardrada at Stamford Bridge. How could this have happened? Why would Tostig turn traitor to wreak revenge on his brother?

This series is available on
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Universal Link

And now it’s finally time for the

Hi

First of all thank you very much for taking the time to answer my questions, I really appreciate it. Here we go! 🙂

Can you, for those who don’t know you already, tell something about yourself and how you became an author?
I was an English Literature major in college and still didn’t perceive of myself as a writer. I owe that to my boyfriend at the time, who encouraged me to start a novel with him. Unfortunately for the boyfriend in question, we had totally different approaches and I continued on my own! Once I joined the SCA (a medieval reenactment society) and learned first-hand about living history, I discovered my vocation and have followed it ever since.

Which books did/do you love to read as a child/now as a grown-up?
As a child I loved animal stories; I even had a poster of Man O’War (a racehorse) on my wall. The Black Stallion, Lad A Dog stand out as my favorites. When I reached college I fell in love with 19th century authors like Alexandre Dumas and Walter Scott. I didn’t realize, even then, that I was reading Historical Fiction. Funny, isn’t it? It wasn’t until I discovered Sharon Kay Penman that I understood that Historical Fiction was a genre. And I could do it, too! To this day I prefer reading Historical Fiction over everything else. I have to force myself to pick up another genre (with the exception of Sherlock Holmes and Nero Wolfe, for some reason. Oh, and Anne Rice.).

Is there a writer whose brain you would love to pick for advice? Who would that be and why?
Back to Sherlock Holmes. Actually, Arthur Conan Doyle wrote some amazing Historical Fiction. Did you ever read The White Company? I think this genre was his real favorite. His characters leapt off the page for me, and I’d love to learn how to capture that ability.

If you could, which fictional character (from your own book(s) or someone else’s) would you like to invite for tea and why?
Back to Anne Rice. I adored Vampire Lestat! He was so compelling. Of course, I wouldn’t want to be turned into a vampire or anything. But he had some great adventures to share.

Do you have some rituals or habits whilst writing?
I have learned to stop for the day while in the midst of an interesting scene. I often leave off in the middle of a sentence. That way, when I begin the next day, I’m off and running. I’m rarely at a loss the next time I sit down to write (I learned that from Ernest Hemingway). It helps fight writer’s block.

Where do you come up with your idea(s)? Do people in your life need to be worried? 😉
Ha! No, that’s one of the reasons I love Historical Fiction. I already know what’s going to happen. I do have to consider carefully until someone or something really calls to me, because I know I’m going to spend the next couple of years in that character’s shoes. Sometimes (like with Richard II), I carry that person around with me for ages before I get to him. I’m often inspired by Shakespeare.

Are you a plotter or do you go with the flow, as a pantser?
I’m definitely a panster. As I said, I know what’s going to happen and in my first draft I concentrate on the historical events. It’s the second draft that gives my characters motivations, relationships, and drama. Once I have the history down, it almost defines how a character is going to react. I usually read ahead on my research (with a series), so I know what to add in the foreshadowing, which might not even come to fruition until the next (unwritten) book. I’m working out that challenge right now in my current WIP about Henry V. His brother Humphrey turns into a monster in later years, but during Henry’s life he is a good guy. Somewhere along the way I’ll need to drop a hint, but where that happens I haven’t a clue.

Can you give novice writers some tips (do’s/don’ts)?
I know from my own experience how easy it is to give up. I managed to land an agent—actually two agents—for my first novel. This was well over thirty years ago, mind you. The second agent dropped me like a proverbial hot potato, and I was so crushed I put the book on the closet shelf and gave up writing for twenty years. I tried very hard to convince myself it didn’t matter, but I was totally unfulfilled. BTW, everything had changed in the interim. What’s an author’s platform? How did internet marketing come into play? I even had a hard time converting my old WordStar format on my 3.25″ floppy disk (WordStar was defunct). I bitterly regret those missing twenty years; I’d be so much farther ahead if I had just kept at it. Or would I?

What are your futureplans as an author?
I have about four more books or so in my current series about the Plantagenets. Maybe even more. Haven’t decided yet whether I should take it to the end of the Wars of the Roses. That’s a lot of fighting! Afterwards, I think I’d like to tackle James VI of Scotland (I of England) and see how far that takes me.

Last, but not least : Can you give my readers one teaser from your book, which is featured here on my blog, please?
Gladly! Here’s a little scene that explains why King Canute took Godwine into his favor:

They had to finish setting up the night’s camp first, and by the time they returned, three rabbits were merrily dripping from a skewer into a healthy fire. Ulf and Godwine ate hungrily, and Canute seemed to be in a rare mood, joking and telling stories. He’s trying to forget, Godwine said to himself, the formidable task before him. Only Canute’s eyes gave away a preoccupation.
Ulf consumed much more alcohol than the other two, and after a few hours, he laid his head happily upon a log and went noisily to sleep. Canute laughed, pointing at the Jarl. “He enjoys his drink,” he said, reaching behind them for a blanket, “but some day it might be the death of him.” (Foreshadowing… my note) He threw the cover over the slumbering Dane. “There. Now he is set for the night.”
Canute took a moment fidgeting with the blanket. When he turned back to Godwine, the smile was gone from his face. “However, I am glad for the chance to talk to you. I find you an interesting man, Godwine, and I would know more about you.”
Alone with him for the first time, Godwine found Canute’s manner different, more personal. It was as if the king had been laid aside, and the man was allowed to come out. His face was even less harsh, although Godwine wondered if that was just the effect of the firelight.
Yet there was no denying the allure of the Dane’s manner; Godwine found himself drawn to him like a moth to a flame. Canute’s voice was caressing, yet precise. Soft, yet unyielding. Although the man’s eyes were piercing, alert, even calculating, he still inspired a certain trust as if scrupulously bound by his own set of rules. One had only to determine what those limits were.
“I do not know what Ulf has already told you about me.”
A smile crossed Canute’s face, then was gone. “It is no matter. I would rather hear you tell me.”
“All right. I am the son of a Saxon thegn. From my childhood, my father pushed me toward bettering myself; a local monk taught me to read and write. All went well until a few years ago…” He paused, looking hard at Canute. Something had just occurred to him.
The Dane nodded. “I suspected as much. Let me finish your sentence. A few years ago, your father was accused of treason. Do you know the whole story?”
Godwine swallowed hard. This was totally unexpected. “I…um, no, not really.”
“Well, I think I can help you. Your father commanded several ships in the Royal fleet, did he not?”
“Yes,” Godwine answered in a hushed voice.
“I thought he might be the same man. I know that in 1009, Eadric Streona’s brother accused Thegn Wulfnoth of betraying King Aethelred. It is said that because of this Wulfnoth took twenty ships and resorted to piracy.”
Godwine was shocked, but things were starting to make sense.
Canute leaned forward, poking the fire with a long stick. “Why do I know this? Because Eadric didn’t have any trouble persuading Wulfnoth to join with him in supporting my own father.”
There was a long silence. Godwine finally let out his breath. “I see. So he went with the Danes, too.”
Canute let out a short laugh. “It seems that both you and I have reason to suspect Eadric and also to be indebted to him. Me, because I need his help with Edmund. And you, because through him, I have occasion to reward your father’s son.”

Isn’t that a great reason to pick up the book and read it?!
Thanks once again, Mercedes Rochelle, for this lovely interview!
Thanks so much for interviewing me! I really enjoyed talking with you.

The Magic of Wor(l)ds

#BlogTour #TheCoffeePotBookClub @cathiedunn / #QandAs : Pilot Who Knows the Waters (The Lord Hani Mysteries #6) – N.L. Holmes @nlholmesbooks #HistoricalMystery #AncientEgypt

– The Magic of Wor(l)ds is a hobby, reviews and other bookish stuff on this site are done for free.
I’m grateful of receiving a free copy from the publisher/author in exchange for an honest review of this book. –

Today I’m delighted to be on the ‘Pilot Who Knows the Waters’ blogtour, organised by The Coffee Pot Book Club.
To promote this book I’ll be sharing an interview between the author and me, but first I have some information

About the Author :

N.L. Holmes is the pen name of a professional archaeologist who received her doctorate from Bryn Mawr College. She has excavated in Greece and in Israel, and taught ancient history and humanities at the university level for many years. She has always had a passion for books, and in childhood, she and her cousin (also a writer today) used to write stories for fun. Today, she and her husband live in France with their chickens and cats, where she weaves, plays the violin, gardens, and dances.

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About the Book :

Hani must secretly obtain a Hittite bridegroom for Queen Meryet-amen, but Ay and the faction behind Prince Tut-ankh-aten are opposed–to the point of violence. Does the death of an artisan have anything to do with Ay’s determination to see his grandson on the throne? Then, another death brings Egypt to the brink of war… Hani’s diplomatic skills will be pushed to the limit in this final book in The Lord Hani Mysteries.

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Universal Link

And now it’s finally time for the

Hi

First of all thank you very much for taking the time to answer my questions, I really appreciate it. Here we go! 🙂

Can you, for those who don’t know you already, tell something about yourself and how you became an author?
I’m an archaeologist and professor of ancient history, who couldn’t wait to retire from teaching so I’d have time to turn the cool stories I found in the past into fiction. I grew up in a book-loving family and it wasn’t odd to consider novelizing as a career, although I had gone down many other paths in the course of my life: artist, antiques dealer, interior decorator, administrative assistant of an educational foundation, and cloistered nun. Believe it or not, all of these were useful in some way when it came time to creating historical fiction. I now live in France with my husband, two cats, and two hens, and we have a grown son.

Which books did/do you love to read as a child/now as a grown-up?
As a reader one could describe as voracious, I read/have read every kind of book, but as a kid I loved historical adventures like Treasure Island and The Three Musketeers and Swiss Family Robinson and Ivanhoe. I read anything that took place at sea (even though I grew up 600 miles from the nearest coast), and also loved science fiction. One of my favorite things was Rostand’s play Cyrano de Bergerac, which I read eight times! As an adult, I still devour 19th-century novels of the Realist-Naturalist stamp, English or French, and also modern literary fiction like Strout, Robinson, or quirky Neal Stephenson. I’ve gotten on fantasy jags, too, and maybe the best book I’ve read in years is Pirotte’s Les Reines—lyrical and thought-provoking. I also like mysteries now, when they’re as well done as Tana French or Louise Penny.

Is there a writer whose brain you would love to pick for advice? Who would that be and why?
I think, strangely, that that might be Ursula LeGuin or Emmanuelle Pirotte, both writers of fantasy. They have managed to mix genre fiction with such beautiful, poetic writing and deep thought-provoking reflection that it takes away from genre fiction the stigma of lightness. Why can’t it be literary too? I still ponder Left Hand of Darkness years after I read it.

If you could, which fictional character (from your own book(s) or someone else’s) would you like to invite for tea and why?
I’d like to meet my own Lord Hani over a teapot, although I don’t know what he’d make of tea. He’d like the cakes, at least! He’s just a nice guy and thoughtful. I’d like to hear his take on what was happening in his country during his lifetime and get his reflections on our own times, which share a lot of factors. I think it would be refreshing to meet a government functionary who followed his conscience even at a cost to his advancement. And he has first hand recollections of figures like Akhenaten, Amenhotep III, and Tutankhamen. There are so many questions he could answer for historians and archeologists.

Do you have some rituals or habits whilst writing?
Not really. At the moment, I write in an armchair in front of the fire, usually with a cat in my lap. I like to play classical music in the background.

Where do you come up with your idea(s)? Do people in your life need to be worried? 😉
No danger for my friends! Most of my characters are real historical people, so I begin with what w know about their lives and actions, then I try to imagine what sort of people they must have been. Certainly bits of physical or psychological traits I’ve met show up, but all mixed together—there are no whole personages I know anywhere, and that includes me. Bits and pieces only. Even my cats get in the mix.

Are you a plotter or do you go with the flow, as a pantser?
Definitely a pantser! I tried advance plotting on the first novel and thought I’d die. I came away convinced I had no imagination, because I couldn’t sit in front of a blank page and work out a whole novel in my head. Corny as it sounds, I let the characters take me where they want to go: their choices determine what happens next, just as they do in real life. I see clues, connections, and opportunities as events unroll and don’t know the denouement until the reader does! Then I go back and nudge things or plant red herrings afterwards.

Can you give novice writers some tips (do’s/don’ts)?
The best advice I can give is get a professional editor or several—someone to critique your plot, find holes, see to consistency and pacing and what have you. Then a line editor to comb the language for smoothness and clarity. It’s good practice for taking criticism—perhaps the author’s main job—and also it will teach you how to write. If you take these experts’ advice, you’ll find your writing gets better and better more quickly than if you did a degree in creative Writing with no specific feedback. Don’t push back! It will only improve your work.

What are your future plans as an author?
I’m starting on a second Egyptian series, a spin-off of The Lord Hani Mysteries, which features his daughter Neferet. She’s a spunky, somewhat counter-cultural heroine who is a physician in the capital city of Waset. She’s been a reader favorite as a child and teenager; now she’s old enough to carry her own novels, with dad Hani’s presence at the side.

Last, but not least : Can you give my readers one teaser from your book, which is featured here on my blog, please?
Plots proliferate. Murders multiply. Can Hani save the Two Lands from a terrible war… or is he the next target?

Isn’t that a great reason to pick up the book and read it?!
Thanks once again, N.L. Holmes, for this lovely interview!

The Magic of Wor(l)ds

#BlogTour #RachelsRandomResources @rararesources / #QandAs : Out For Revenge – Tony Bassett @tonybassett1

– The Magic of Wor(l)ds is a hobby, reviews and other bookish stuff on this site are done for free.
I’m grateful of receiving a free copy from the publisher/author in exchange for an honest review of this book. –

Today I’m delighted to be on the ‘Out For Revenge’ blogtour, organised by Rachel’s Random Resources.
To promote this book I’ll be sharing an interview between the author and me, but first I have some information

About the Author :

I am a semi-retired journalist who was born in West Kent. While growing up, I spent hours reading and writing, and, from an early age, nursed an ambition to become first a journalist and then novelist. My theory was that, in order to write novels, one had to have life experiences to colour one’s writing and one could obtain those experiences through journalism.
I was fortunate enough to be named Time-Life Magazine Student Journalist of the Year in 1971 in a competition organised by the National Union of Students. At the time, I was editing the student newspaper at Hull University, where I gained a BA Honours degree in History and Political Studies.
After six years working on provincial newspapers in Sidcup, Worcester and Cardiff, I became a freelance journalist in London. For 24 years, I was a reporter on the staff of the Sunday People (now part of Reach plc, formerly Trinity Mirror). Over the years, I sold tens of thousands of stories to the national newspapers, including the Daily Mirror, Daily Mail, The Sun, Daily Star, Daily Telegraph and London Evening Standard. I helped cover the Jeremy Thorpe trial at the Old Bailey for the Evening Standard. I broke the news in a Sun newspaper exclusive in April 1989 that Bill Wyman, the Rolling Stones guitarist aged 52, was to marry 18-year-old Mandy Smith. I bought 200 blank MOT forms to expose a trade in fake certificates.
My speciality was tracking people down. For instance, I found evidence about Rod Stewart’s secret love child Sarah Streeter by tracing a retired adoption agent through a library ticket. On one occasion, I took an escaped gangster back to prison. Some of my stories can be read on my website (see below); others are generally available online. For thirty years, I was also employed as a birth and marriage researcher mainly for the Mail on Sunday, Sunday Mirror, Sunday People and The Sun.
I have a grown-up son and four grown-up daughters who all live in South Wales.

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About the Book :

When notorious gangland boss Tadeusz Filipowski is released from prison, several people start looking over their shoulder.
A volatile character, not shy of picking fights, Filipowski plans to expand his drugs empire and put his competitors on a backfoot. That’s until he turns up dead. Very dead.
DS Sunita Roy of the Heart of England police is handed the case but it’s a challenge to find the killer of a man with so many enemies.
DCI Gavin Roscoe would lend more support but he is busy nailing down suspicions of corruption plaguing the force.
Soon, however, the investigations will bump into one another. And unless Roy and Roscoe can get to the bottom of the mystery, they could well become the next victims.
OUT FOR REVENGE is the fourth gripping standalone mystery in the Detectives Roy and Roscoe crime fiction series by Tony Bassett.

Purchase Links:
Amazon UK
Amazon US

And now it’s finally time for the

Hi

First of all thank you very much for taking the time to answer my questions, I really appreciate it. Here we go! 🙂

Can you, for those who don’t know you already, tell something about yourself and how you became an author?
Thank you for giving me an opportunity to discuss my books. I’m a Kent born writer who spent more than forty years working as a journalist in the Midlands, South Wales and London. For most of that time, I was a reporter for the Sunday People (part of Reach Plc), working both as a news reporter and for the investigations department. After becoming semi-retired, I at last found time to engage in my long-held ambition of writing crime fiction. There hasn’t been a moment in my life (since the age of nine) when I have not been involved in writing in some way or other.

Which books did/do you love to read as a child/now as a grown-up?
My favourite books while growing up were Richmal Crompton’s Just William series, Ian Fleming’s James Bond novels and Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes. Nowadays my favourite writers include Peter James, Val McDermid and Ian Rankin. My favourite book of all time is The Thirty-Nine Steps by John Buchan.

Is there a writer whose brain you would love to pick for advice? Who would that be and why?
Arthur Conan Doyle was a fascinating character whom I would have loved to have interviewed as a journalist. Since he died aged 71 in 1930, that’s obviously not possible. But I would have liked to have asked about how he came to write his detective novels, how much research he did, his sporting career, his political and justice campaigns and his interest in spiritualism.

If you could, which fictional character (from your own book(s) or someone else’s) would you like to invite for tea and why?
In an ideal world, I’d like to invite DCI Gavin Roscoe, one of the two main characters in my Midlands crime series, to tea and ask why he doesn’t promote his clever sergeant, DS Sunita Roy. She seems to be the one solving all the crimes while he occasionally gets in the way! But he wouldn’t accept my invitation, I’m fairly sure. He leads such a hectic life. Even when he’s at home in Queensbridge, his wife and two children keep him on his toes.

Do you have some rituals or habits whilst writing?
I like drinking cups of coffee while writing and I always try to stick to a regime of writing at least 1,000 words a day.

Where do you come up with your idea(s)? Do people in your life need to be worried? 😉
Many of my ideas come from the people I’ve met and the experiences I’ve had while working as a journalist. I’ve been smuggled into judge’s chambers at the Old Bailey to test their security. I once bought 200 blank MOT certificates to help expose a crime gang. I got Mandy Smith’s sister in Highgate to reveal to me details of Mandy’s plans to wed Rolling Stone Bill Wyman. I’ve been to armed sieges, celebrity weddings, and was in a magistrates’ court in West London when a Welshman took to the dock in a dazzling dragon costume. I’ve watched a group of students at Middlesex University being hypnotised by a dog and taken a fugitive gangster back to jail. So you could say I’ve seen a bit of life. My friends don’t need to be worried !

Are you a plotter or do you go with the flow, as a pantser?
I’m afraid I tend to go with the flow, flying by the seat of my pants. By the time I’ve reached Chapter Three, I try to produce a rough draft, showing the way I expect the novel to progress on a chapter by chapter basis. But this can be subject to drastic change as the writing process goes on and fresh ideas emerge. Like many authors, I find the plot is to a large extent driven by the characters.

Can you give novice writers some tips (do’s/don’ts)?
Get your friends to read your finished short story, book, script or poem. But be aware that, since they are your friends, they may not wish to upset you by giving too frank an appraisal. Learn from the works of other writers (but never copy directly). Join a writers’ group. Submit your finished masterpiece to a publisher that releases works similar to your own. Never give up.

What are your future plans as an author?
I’m hoping to continue with my series set in the Midlands, featuring detectives Roy and Roscoe. I have just finished writing the fifth book in the series. I also hope one day to get two unpublished books released. One is set in London and one in Sydney.

Last, but not least : Can you give my readers one teaser from your book, which is featured here on my blog, please?
Here is an extract from Chapter 3 of OUT FOR REVENGE in which DCI Gavin Roscoe’s superior officer briefs him about a corrupt detective.

Chief Superintendent Nicola Norris was sitting at her oak desk with the door wide open.
‘Is that you, Gavin?’ she asked as heavy footsteps echoed round the stairwell outside her second-floor office.
‘Yes, ma’am,’ he replied as he reached the landing, straightening his tie. He strode into her office, closing the door behind him.
‘Pull up a seat,’ she said, stroking her grey hair absentmindedly. ‘By the way, how’s your son, George?’
‘He was fine the last time I spoke to him, ma’am. He’s still learning the ropes, doing basic police training over in Warwick.’
‘Good,’ she said. ‘Look, Gavin, I’ve called you up here because, I’m afraid, I’ve received a worrying report about one of our detectives.’
Norris, who had been badly injured in a horse-riding accident a few years before, manoeuvred her wheelchair closer to her desk.
‘Disgraceful, but no big surprise. We had an inkling, didn’t we, ma’am?’ he said while sitting down on a small chair.
‘Yes,’ she said, peering over her reading glasses. ‘You don’t need reminding that some of the information I’m going to share with you must remain strictly between us.’
‘Of course.’
‘Your suspicions towards the end of last year have proved correct that one of our detectives has gone rogue. But it’s only this week we’ve received clear evidence of this.’
‘From a reliable source?’
‘A very reliable source. From my own goddaughter, who works on the support staff with Summerstoke police. We now know we’re dealing with a serious case of police corruption.’
He shrugged. ‘Unfortunately, there’s always been an element of it.’
‘Yes, I know, and whenever it rears its head, we take swift action. But this isn’t a case of a traffic officer turning a blind eye to his cousin’s driving offence or a constable taking a backhander from a pimp. This concerns a detective inspector at Summerstoke who, for all intents and purposes, is involved in running an OCG linked to the drugs trade.’
Roscoe folded his arms. The suggestion that an officer might be closely linked to an organised crime group was an abomination to him.
‘Deplorable, ma’am,’ he remarked.
‘Previously, as you know, Tom Vickers was examining whether Summerstoke CID had properly investigated the “body in the bath” murder case concerning the death of the artist Brendan O’Sullivan.’
‘Yes, ma’am.’
‘Things have moved on since then and we need to focus totally on this bad apple.’

Isn’t that a great reason to pick up the book and read it?!
Thanks once again, Tony Bassett, for this lovely interview!

The Magic of Wor(l)ds

#BookBirthdayBlitz #RachelsRandomResources @rararesources / #QandAs : Sherlock Holmes & the Singular Affair – M. K. Wiseman @FaublesFables

– The Magic of Wor(l)ds is a hobby, reviews and other bookish stuff on this site are done for free.
I’m grateful of receiving a free copy from the publisher/author in exchange for an honest review of this book. –

Today I’m delighted to be on the ‘Sherlock Holmes & the Singular Affair’ blogtour, organised by Rachel’s Random Resources.
To promote this book I’ll be sharing an interview between the author and me, but first I have some information

About the Author :

M. K. Wiseman has degrees in Interarts & Technology and Library & Information Studies from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Her office, therefore, is a curious mix of storyboards and reference materials. Both help immensely in the writing of historical novels. She currently resides in Cedarburg, Wisconsin.

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About the Book :

Before Baker Street, there was Montague.
Before partnership with a former army doctor recently returned from Afghanistan, Sherlock Holmes had but the quiet company of his own great intellect. Solitary he might be but, living as he did for the thrill of the chase, it was enough.
For a little while, at the least, it was enough.
That is, until a client arrives at his door with a desperate plea and an invitation into a world of societal scandal and stage door dandies. Thrust deep in an all-consuming role and charged with the safe-keeping of another, Holmes must own to his limits or risk danger to others besides himself in this the case of the aluminium crutch.

Purchase Links:
Amazon UK
Amazon US
B&N
Kobo
Apple Books

And now it’s finally time for the

Hi

First of all thank you very much for taking the time to answer my questions, I really appreciate it. Here we go! 🙂

Can you, for those who don’t know you already, tell something about yourself and how you became an author?
How I became an author; a story in 2 parts:
I had the summer of 2004 all to myself following a surgery. It was the type of surgery that keeps a person couch-bound for days and days on end. So, one morning, I started writing. I penned an entire (lousy) first draft of a book, stuffed it in a bottom desk drawer, and promptly got on with my life – a life which was aiming in many non-author-y directions.
Fast forward to early 2013. I tend to hang out on Twitter … a lot. And on Friday evenings there used to be something called ‘steampunk chat’. It was through that chat that I heard of an indie publisher looking for short story submissions for an anthology. On a whim I threw something together, submitted, and was accepted. Fom there, their interest in my work had me digging that old novel draft from the desk drawer and penning more and more books. And here I am, authoring full time and having a blast doing it.

Which books did/do you love to read as a child/now as a grown-up?
Until a few years back, I had a very specific comfort read which I would return over and over again. Carol Kendall’s The Gammage Cup. Received it from the Scholastic Book Fair in grade school. (I believe I was drawn to the cover? I know I hadn’t any notion of the story itself when I picked it out.) That book has since fallen a bit out of my regular rotation, admittedly, but I do still love it and have a deep history with the book.
Other multi-reads: Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings, various Dragonlance books (anything with Raistlin has my attention), and Douglas Adams’ The Long Dark Tea-time of the Soul.

Is there a writer whose brain you would love to pick for advice? Who would that be and why?
I regularly ‘pick’ Ursula Le Guin’s brain via a Twitter bot which someone has created out of quotes and bit of wisdom. I do hunt down interviews she made, too. She can manage to say so much with so few words, I am forever in awe.

If you could, which fictional character (from your own book(s) or someone else’s) would you like to invite for tea and why?
Sherlock Holmes would likely not give me the time of day. It would be worth sending him the invitation, though. Mrs. Hudson would be a lovely companion for tea, come to think of it. Perhaps I should look past the detective and straight to Mrs. Hudson. 🙂

Do you have some rituals or habits whilst writing?
Write early day; edit late day. That’s about my only rule.
Chair? Position? Medium (laptop, paper, typewriter)? None of the rest really matter for me. But the timing? My brain is useless past 2 p.m. most days. Editing in the evening with my tired brain makes me more … ahem … receptive to compromise and change.

Where do you come up with your idea(s)? Do people in your life need to be worried? 😉
If anyone worries in this equation, it’s me. I have this horror of people reading something in one of my books and going “Gosh! Is that you?” Hearing my books in audio book form has been shocking to me, for example. It’s my words but from someone else’s mouth. That fresh perspective has brought out my shyness in new and alarming ways. Because of course there are threads of me in things; but no, I have no conscious picking of anything from outside of myself and using it in fiction. Mostly my idea process is one of “Golly, gee, here’s a premise I’d like to read”, followed by putting up every road block into the character’s path—reasonable and otherwise—until there’s Plot.

Are you a plotter or do you go with the flow, as a pantser?
Plotter, plotter, plotter. I have charts! I have detailed outlines! I have massive headaches, hahaha.
That said, if serendipity comes calling, I listen, consider, and then adjust accordingly. Some things just can’t be put into a cold spreadsheet. Sometimes key elements must come up organically during the process.

Can you give novice writers some tips (do’s/don’ts)?
I am a terrible advice giver because I believe there isn’t a whole lot of universally applicable advice when it comes to writing, and so harbour a fear that I’ll mislead someone by saying something under the guise of dispensing wisdom. For me, the permission to be loose with the process—write out of order, have no routine—is super helpful. A lot of folks think you need to start at chapter 1, page 1. Me, I’ll start at whatever point just sounds fun to write and use momentum to my advantage. Granted, I am a plotter, so it’s fairly safe for me to write scenes out of order. But, hey, even things that don’t fit the final work might be useful as either germs for other stories or valuable exercise in how to get a snippet of idea down on the page in pretty prose.

What are your futureplans as an author?
I’ve another Sherlock Holmes & in the works. It’s giving me trouble. But that is likely because I’ve given myself a deadline and I feel it looming. I’ve the long-promised but still incomplete Poison Game. And I’ve a new Croatian historical fantasy that I’m just so excited to get to work on, but I need to have the time to do it. And those are just my “front burner” projects. Oh! And I’m messing about with some Shakespeare for fun. We’ll see what happens with that.

Last, but not least : Can you give my readers one teaser from your book, which is featured here on my blog, please?
The following is an excerpt from chapter 8, where Holmes has discarded one fake persona and adopted a quick unsavory disguise so as to meet with an informant to glean some information:

And now the hour had struck. I set off for the lair of my unlawful associate by way of Noel Street, exiting my rooms the same way I had come. The sport of it all brought a smile to my face and made for an easy and unaccosted route. Nothing had, of course, changed at Toby’s residence. I hadn’t expected it to. Loafing about in the shadows for the duration of three very cheap cigarettes, I felt the last of Secker fade. It was safe for me to proceed into the rest of my night’s errands.
As the span of years has grown long since these events, I can safely give some details of the person whom I was to meet. A retired garret thief, my man—we’ll call him Smith—had been out of the game for over a dozen years, having been arrested, tried, and booked. Rather than endure ten years’ penal servitude, he had instead been transported and, upon his return, turned his hand at acting as a chief advisor to a new generation of attic burglars. Our semi-dangerous friendship was built on an uneasy trust and maintained by sheer will—both mine and his. For to back down was to turn oneself over to the mercies and morals of the other side. My kind liked to see justice done; his kind abhorred a loose end.
He tolerated me because he found me fascinating and considered me kindred in method if not in spirit. I was known as one of the more excellent cracksmen around, and I believe that his crew harboured hopes that, one day, they might win me to their side. For me, his information was often good and—this, he himself claimed—distant enough from his own band that it did not stray close to betrayal.
In any event, I was welcome at Smith’s lodging house so long as my visits were few and my requests even fewer. Here on the south bank of the river amongst the long tables with their rough and restless men, in a smoky, dim room smelling of sweat, bacon, and coffee, I was received, and two names were passed my way.
I ran my eye over the slip of paper: Thomas Hall. Keppel Gang.
Smith looked at me long and hard before muttering, “May God help you if a word of that is breathed as having come from me or mine, Mr. Holmes.”

Isn’t that a great reason to pick up the book and read it?!
Thanks once again, M. K. Wiseman, for this lovely interview!

Giveaway :

Win 2 x M. K. Wiseman Sherlock Holmes Book Bundle (Open to US / UK and Canada)
Prize includes:
Signed and ‘annotated’ with a few margin notes copies of Sherlock Holmes & the Singular Affair & Sherlock Holmes & the Ripper of Whitechapel
Nifty ‘magnifying glass’ bookmark

*Terms and Conditions – UK / US & Canada entries welcome. Please enter using the Rafflecopter box below. The winner will be selected at random via Rafflecopter from all valid entries and will be notified by Twitter and/or email. If no response is received within 7 days then Rachel’s Random Resources reserves the right to select an alternative winner. Open to all entrants aged 18 or over. Any personal data given as part of the competition entry is used for this purpose only and will not be shared with third parties, with the exception of the winners’ information. This will passed to the giveaway organiser and used only for fulfilment of the prize, after which time Rachel’s Random Resources will delete the data. I am not responsible for despatch or delivery of the prize.

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The Magic of Wor(l)ds

#BlogTour #RachelsRandomResources @rararesources / #QandAs : The Sea Glass Beach – Tina Pritchard

– The Magic of Wor(l)ds is a hobby, reviews and other bookish stuff on this site are done for free.
I’m grateful of receiving a free copy from the publisher/author in exchange for an honest review of this book. –

Today I’m delighted to be on the ‘The Sea Glass Beach’ blogtour, organised by Rachel’s Random Resources.
To promote this book I’ll be sharing an interview between the author and me, but first I have some information

About the Author :

Tina Pritchard spent most of her life engaged in bringing up a family, taking a social science degree, working as a lecturer, a trainer and more recently as an independent celebrant conducting funerals, weddings and naming ceremonies. Her first book, a psychological thriller, In A Deep Dark Wood, was published in 2021. The Sea Glass Beach is a departure in genre and started life as a short story morphing over the years into a novel. It is a work of fiction inspired in part by her own mother’s experience of giving birth to a child at Sean Ross Abbey Mother and Baby Home in the 1950’s. That child, born all those years ago in Co Tipperary, Ireland, is the author of this book.
Tina loves to write and has won competitions for both her short stories and her poetry. She lives in a beautiful part of the world and gains much of her inspiration from walking her badly behaved terrier, Horace, in the Derbyshire countryside.

About the Book :

In 1950’s southern Ireland, single mother Theresa gives birth to a child she names Roisin. Arrangements are in hand for the adoption when Theresa changes her mind. The child, gifted and intuitive, is viewed by the local community as ‘odd’. Reeling from the news of Roisin’s heart-breaking expulsion from convent school, Theresa makes a momentous decision. To protect her daughter, she must send her away.
Canada’s wild beauty serves as a backdrop to a year of challenges for Roisin. She encounters trauma and devastating loss, but also gains a new family and finds love with the enigmatic Cal. Death, grief and culpability are potent forces she must somehow come to terms with. Can a tiny model boat unshackle her from her past and help her journey into a hopeful future?

Purchase Links:
Amazon UK
Amazon US

And now it’s finally time for the

Hi

First of all thank you very much for taking the time to answer my questions, I really appreciate it. Here we go! 🙂

Can you, for those who don’t know you already, tell something about yourself and how you became an author? 
I have always enjoyed writing. Even as a young child I used to scribble away making up little stories and writing poems. I was slightly synaesthetic and loved the shape and colour of words. Sadly, that has diminished with age. Three years ago I decided to have a go at writing a psychological thriller which was published in February 2021.

Which books did/do you love to read as a child/now as a grown-up?
As a child, Little Women, Black Beauty, What Katy Did, stories by Hans Christian Anderson. Even when I was quite young I enjoyed being frightened so loved anything with an element of horror. More recently I read a few psychological thrillers in preparation for writing my first book In A Deep Dark Wood, but became a little jaded with the genre,

Is there a writer whose brain you would love to pick for advice? Who would that be and why?
I would like to ask Joan Didion how she makes writing look so effortless, especially when dealing with such emotionally devastating life experiences.

If you could, which fictional character (from your own book(s) or someone else’s) would you like to invite for tea and why?
I would invite Aunt Peggy from the Sea Glass Beach. She could bring one of her mouthwatering cakes and I could ask her about her early life as a war bride in Canada.

Do you have some rituals or habits whilst writing?
I’m a bit of a diva when I’m writing. It needs to be deathly quiet with no distractions.

Where do you come up with your idea(s)? Do people in your life need to be worried? 😉
Its difficult when you know a lot of strong characters not to include some of their qualities or traits in the characters you write. I hope they would take it as a compliment if they did happen to recognise themselves.

Are you a plotter or do you go with the flow, as a pantser?
I confess to being primarily a bit of a pantser. I’m not disciplined enough to be a plotter.

Can you give novice writers some tips (do’s/don’ts)?
Don’t spend too long gazing at a blank page. Get it all down to start with then revisit to cull or expand your themes.

What are your future plans as an author?
In the deep, dark throes of editing, making corrections and rewriting swathes of text I swear I will never do this again, (my husband can vouch for this) but I’m sure it wont be long before I feel the pull of the page. In fact, this afternoons walk has thrown up some ideas that need committing to paper asap!

Last, but not least : Can you give my readers one teaser from your book, which is featured here on my blog, please?

The ocean has magical powers, Roisin thought. For It can take a broken shard of glass and roll and tumble it until it becomes a thing of beauty. To find it you must visit the sea glass beach. This is a place where love blossoms and where a broken heart can begin the process of healing. A world of opportunities awaits, but she musn’t delay. The tide is coming in and who knows what it may bring in its wake.

Isn’t that a great reason to pick up the book and read it?!
Thanks once again, Tina Pritchard, for this lovely interview!

The Magic of Wor(l)ds

#BlogTour #RachelsRandomResources @rararesources / #QandAs : Driven – Kerena Swan @KerenaSwan @HobeckBooks

– The Magic of Wor(l)ds is a hobby, reviews and other bookish stuff on this site are done for free.
I’m grateful of receiving a free copy from the publisher/author in exchange for an honest review of this book. –

Today I’m delighted to be on the ‘Driven’ blogtour, organised by Rachel’s Random Resources.
To promote this book I’ll be sharing an author supplied interview, but first I have some information

About the Author :

We are thrilled to be introducing DI Dave Paton and his son Tommy, the stars of the first novel in Kerena Swan’s new series, to the world. Before coming to Hobeck, Kerena had published three novels, Dying To See You, Scared to Breathe and Who’s There? and has built a solid fan base around her writing career thus far. She is a juggler extraordinaire: driving forward a successful care business she runs with her husband yet finding time to write. She loves to write, here and there and everywhere when she’s not working. We don’t know how she does it but we are glad that she does! Kerena talks about her writing, her influences and how she came to Hobeck in this video.

Social Media Links:
Website
Twitter
Facebook

About the Book :

Every mother’s worst nightmare
It was only for a couple of minutes, while dropping Noah off at nursery. Little did Melanie realise that leaving her sleeping son in the car would end up being the biggest regret of her life.
A teenage challenge turns sour
For teenager Woody, stealing cars with his new friend helps alleviate the tedium of a life of poverty and boredom. This isn’t what he wants to do with his life but for now, he feels accepted. Except on this occasion, his actions have consequences that could change his life forever. Is it too late to turn his life around?
How far would you go to save those you love?
While DI Paton is on the case of the missing child, he is quickly drawn into a web of deception that hits dangerously close to home. He soon finds himself torn in two, not knowing which way to turn: save his career or his family? Will he be able to crack the case before he himself cracks?

Purchase Links:
Amazon UK
Amazon US

And now it’s finally time for the author supplied

How many novels have you written and are they all in the same genre? If not, why did you switch?
I’ve written five novels in total and one novella. My first two, Dying to See You and Scared to Breathe, were purely psychological thrillers but the third is a crime thriller and was inspired by a course I attended on cuckooing and County Lines. I wanted to raise awareness of the vulnerability of people with disabilities so wrote Who’s There? through the eyes of a man with Down syndrome. Reviewers loved the character, Arnold, but my publisher wanted another psychological thriller so I wrote Blood Loss and incorporated a detective inspector with a son like Arnold. Sadly, they didn’t want a DI book so it sat on my laptop redundant for a year until my friend and fellow author, A. B. Morgan, posted on Facebook about her great new publisher. I sent them Blood Loss and they snapped it up.
Hobeck then asked for a novella to introduce the series and I began Driven but it soon promised to provide enough story for a full length novel so I set it aside and wrote Here She Lies (available from http://www.Hobeck.net as part of the free Crime Bites anthology). Driven is now finished and being published at the end of November 2022 and I’m busy planning the next instalment.

When you’re writing do you ever feel out of your depth?
I think most authors suffer from Imposter Syndrome at some point in their writing careers. There are times when I think I’m not a proper author and my writing is rubbish so I step back from it and when I re-visit and tweak it I can see it isn’t so bad after all. At times, I worry about getting my facts right so I either research it, complete an online workshop or pay someone who knows the answers to check it and give me advice.
Lesley Eames was my tutor for a novel writing course years ago and later my editor. She will always tell me honestly if she thinks something doesn’t work, the character wouldn’t behave that way or there is an implausible coincidence.
Graham Bartlett, a retired police detective and senior officer, gives me advice on police procedures and says things like, ‘She would be arrested at this point,’ or ‘law in Scotland is different. I’ll ask my Scottish colleagues to check the correct terminology.’

What’s the biggest distraction in your life that takes you away from writing?
Last May I bought a standard poodle puppy as my daughter was fostering his mother for the breeder. He has brought immense joy to my life but takes up incredible chunks of my time (and money!). Every minute and penny is worth it though. Since I’ve had him I’ve walked about two hours a day and made some wonderful friends. People talk to you when you’re walking a dog in a way they wouldn’t if you were a lone walker. It’s supposed to be my thinking time for my writing but often I listen to audiobooks if I’m not busy chatting to other people. I suppose it’s all good research though.

If you could choose one person to read your book who would it be and which book would you like them to read?
I would be thrilled if Stephen King read my books. I haven’t read all his but I enjoyed his book, ‘On Writing,’ and I’d love to know whether he thought my writing was any good. I think ‘Who’s There?’ is the book I’m most proud of, although people tell me my writing is getting better all the time so maybe I’d ask him to read Driven.

What do you think is the greatest challenge facing authors today?
I think the sheer quantity of books available to read, often at giveaway prices, is the biggest hurdle for authors. How can I persuade someone to read my books over the millions of others out there? I’m so grateful to people who read my novels and especially to those who write reviews – good or bad. If it wasn’t for readers there would be no point to writing. I think bloggers are fantastic too for giving up their free time to talk about books, read them and write reviews. I am truly grateful.

Giveaway :

Win a paperback copy of Blood Loss by Kerena Swan (Open to UK Only)

*Terms and Conditions – UK entries welcome. Please enter using the Rafflecopter box below. The winner will be selected at random via Rafflecopter from all valid entries and will be notified by Twitter and/or email. If no response is received within 7 days then Rachel’s Random Resources reserves the right to select an alternative winner. Open to all entrants aged 18 or over. Any personal data given as part of the competition entry is used for this purpose only and will not be shared with third parties, with the exception of the winners’ information. This will passed to the giveaway organiser and used only for fulfilment of the prize, after which time Rachel’s Random Resources will delete the data. I am not responsible for despatch or delivery of the prize.

A Rafflecopter Giveaway

The Magic of Wor(l)ds

#BlogTour #RandomThingsTours @RandomTTours / #QandAs : The Atenisti #TheAtenisti – Aidan K. Morrissey @AidanKMorrissey #TheConradPress

– The Magic of Wor(l)ds is a hobby, reviews and other bookish stuff on this site are done for free.
I’m grateful of receiving a free copy from the publisher/author in exchange for an honest review of this book. –

Today I’m delighted to be on the ‘The Atenisti’ blogtour, organised by Random Things Tours.
To promote this book I’ll be sharing an interview between the author and me, but first I have some information

About the Author :

Aidan K. Morrissey, a lawyer, has lived and worked all over the world, his time in Italy, Germany and India, all of which feature in this, his second novel, has given him a deep insight into their culture and everyday way of life. Aidan was inspired to write ‘The Atenisti’ after reading daily newspaper accounts of horrific attacks on young Indian women and children. An enthusiastic amateur Egyptologist, avid reader and writer, Aidan now lives in Northumberland.

About the Book :

‘The Atenisti’ is a global rollercoaster ride of murder, the quest for justice, and retribution through the eyes of a conscience-driven assassin.
Travelling under numerous aliases, Ricci, a member of a secret organisation, finishes a mission in London. Apparently followed, he escapes to Italy. Seeking to avenge the kidnap, rape and murder of a young girl, he is plunged into a battle against a worldwide paedophile ring of extraordinary extent and power. This battle leads Ricci from Italy, through Germany, to India and beyond. Can he take on the might of this criminal network which seems determined to eliminate him?

Amazon UK

And now it’s finally time for the

Hi

First of all thank you very much for taking the time to answer my questions, I really appreciate it. Here we go! 🙂

Can you, for those who don’t know you already, tell something about yourself and how you became an author?
It’s difficult to give a short answer to this question. With a LLB from Leicester University, I qualified as a Solicitor. After some years, I set up my own law practice but was head hunted by an Italian company and I moved to Italy, with my wife in 1990. From 1995 until Covid changed the world, my work entailed me traveling throughout the world and have been lucky enough to have called, Brazil, Germany, the U.S., Italy and India my home for varying degrees of time. Since Covid we have been based in the North-east of England and are (still) building a house in Northumberland. With up to 30 plane journeys a month, I devoured books, often reading a novel in one go on a long haul journey. I have always been an avid lover of literature and a trip to Egypt led me on a series of discoveries which I felt told a story that needed telling. My first novel ‘The Awakening Aten’ was a direct result of this desire. ‘The Atenisti’ my second novel is completely different. For seven years I spent around six months a year in India. I read the newspapers every day and I was horrified and shocked by what I was reading in relation to the treatment of women and children in certain sections of the Indian community. I believed this was something constantly being played down and rarely making the press outside of India. This novel, which is set against the background of real newspaper reports, is my attempt to bring the reality of the situation to a wider audience, in the hope that soething can be done to help.

Which books did/do you love to read as a child/now as a grown-up?
As a child and growing up I always read anything I could get my hands on – from Enid Blyton to Robert Louis Stevenson, with Richard Adams’ Watership Down’ and Kenneth Grahame’s ‘Wind in the Willows’ having a special place in my heart. In later years I have gone through phases with Science Fiction and Fantasy probably being the first. Followed by the crime and court procedural novels of John Grisham, Lee Child’s Reacher novels, Michael Connelly, Ann Cleeves, Particia Cornwell… the list is almost endless but I have read everything written by these authors and many more. In the last ten years my first love has been historical novels with Pauline Gedge and Bernard Cornwell being the writers I most enjoy in this genre, however I read so many novels by many different novelists. I think I can sum up my taste as ‘anything which is well written and true to the time period it is written in.’

Is there a writer whose brain you would love to pick for advice? Who would that be and why?
This is a great question – by which I mean almost impossible to answer!
I suppose Bernard Cornwall and Stephen King would be high on the list as he is such prolific writers with seemingly bottomless pits of imagination. But, I think I would choose James A. Michener, whose Novel ‘Hawaii’ I read in my early teens and it gave me a love of family sagas. I would have liked to ask him how he was able to write novels where because of death and tragedy there is a constant stream of characters but each well rounded and believable.

If you could, which fictional character (from your own book(s) or someone else’s) would you like to invite for tea and why?
It would have to be ‘The Mad Hatter’ from the Lewis Carroll ‘Alice’ stories. Simply because the tea would go on forever and I’d never know what would happen next.

Do you have some rituals or habits whilst writing?
I have no rituals, but I, like many other writers, particularly of historical fiction, have a habit of going down research wormholes and spending copious amounts of time on researching the most miniscule of details!

Where do you come up with your idea(s)? Do people in your life need to be worried? 😉
It depends on the genre I am working in. If historical, it will be a person who lived or event which took place in the period I am looking at. Currently I am writing a novel based entirely around a body discovered in a grave from more than a thousand years ago. How did he get there? Why was he buried with those items?
If writing more contemporary stories, again I like to find a factual basis, but yes, I do base certain characteristics of the people in my novels on people I know now or have known previously. Hopefully they are sufficiently disguised so no-one will take offence.

Are you a plotter or do you go with the flow, as a pantser?
I fall in the middle and tend to call myself a ‘planster.’ I tend to want to know where the story I am writing is going to end, but generally the road to get there is completely left to the moment. It’s like deciding to go from John o’Groats to Landsend. You know you have to go in a general south westerly direction but there can be unsinposted side roads and roundabouts you weren’t expecting which can take the journey anywhere.

Can you give novice writers some tips (do’s/don’ts)?
That’s easy – do believe in yourself and your writing and don’t give up.

What are your futureplans as an author?
I am writing the sequel to my Egyptian Novel. The story is set to cover a further 75 years or so of history which will take another four books to tell.
There is potentially a sequel to ‘The Atenisti’ in the offing and the story I mentioned before about the ancient skeleton.

Last, but not least : Can you give my readers one teaser from your book, which is featured here on my blog, please?
‘Always leave expecting not to return,’ more of Giacomo’s wise words. I never disobeyed one of his lessons. He disobeyed once and it got him killed…
Giacomo had always liked neat and tidy, he would not have liked his own crime scene photos. There is nothing neat about having your face chewed off and throat ripped out by dogs.

Isn’t that a great reason to pick up the book and read it?!
Thanks once again, Aidan K. Morrissey, for this lovely interview!

The Magic of Wor(l)ds